It's a light RPG game that in many ways reminds me of South Park: the stick of Truth in so much as it's mostly free roaming and there are lots of puzzles to solve outside of battles (of course, it's not as funny or offencive as South Park). The good news here is that you can all play it as it's landed on last gen, current gen and PC, so if you wanted it you could get it. The bad news is, the combat is boring.
Let's start positive though, and you drop straight in to a weird and fun menu at the start and begin your crazy journey through time to stop the evil dentist from stopping Halloween 'cause sweets = bad teeth. I won't ruin any more of the story because it's easily the best part of the game, it doesn't take itself too seriously but really makes the characters dread of 'the end of Halloween' come across so well that I began to wonder if this is what American children really think of it. I hope not (actually, I don't care).
Lots of the game involves trick or treating to collect 'candy' to get other characters to do things for you as well as you having to do what at first seem like side missions, but turn out to be story integral. It's a nice way to give you something different to do, after all, who wouldn't want to perform in a jazz band with a clown horn.
The name of the game and what I've mentioned about Halloween implies it already, but the game is all about collecting new costumes that have both in and out of battle uses. Outside of battle many have special abilities (e.g the pterodactyl costume lets you blow away piles of leaves) that help you both advance the story and go back and get hidden collectibles that you couldn't get to before. See, the whole world is open to you once you've unlocked all the areas, it can just be a pain getting around because the map system isn't great (you have to buy them from some dodgy guy selling cards from his long jacket to kids in exchange for sweets (hmm...)) and then they don't show you where you are on it, so you have to figure that out, which can be a pain when you're running around trying to match your location to the map then run in to an enemy and have to battle him which is an issue because...
It's too simple. There's 1 attack choice and a special move that you build up towards by nailing your attacks and blocks. That element of timing your attacks, blocks and counters do add something a bit extra but it's easy to get them dead on anyway. If anything it was more annoying because I kept miss timing them whilst trying to have a drink of tea!) The other options are 'run' (you can figure that one out)' or using a 'creepy treat card', which are cards you collect throughout the game that give you boosts during battle, 3 of which you can have active at one time, and hence select in battle. Thing is with those, you don't need them, I think i used 2 throughout the game, and the first time was just to see what the deal was with them.
There is an attempt to add extra depth to the battle by having slightly different types of monster that are stronger/weaker against different costumes, but you can't tell what enemies you'll be facing when you start a battle (apart from which general group they'll be from) and so can't adjust accordingly, and there's no way to swap your costumes mid battle to change it, so that seems mostly pointless to me. There are certain costumes that make your special heal your cohorts instead of them being an attack, but if you need to do any mid battle healing you're playing it wrong anyway (the battle AI is pretty bad). While I'm being negative I just also want to add that the post game is disappointing as you get to walk around your neighbourhood seeing how you've change time and made everything better, but I had some unfinished side quests I wanted to go back and do, but Couldn't, which annoyed me.
Off my high horse now and try to be more positive again. It has a fun cell shaded visual style (as seen above) and seeing the transformation of kids in costumes to full fledged versions of what they're representing is fun (especially the hot dog which becomes some weird 3 headed (hot)Dog (additionally, the werewolf does the thriller dance for victory)).
To summarise then, Costume Quest 2 is a small RPG with a fun story, imaginative quests and some good lighthearted humour, but with such a tedious battle system that from about halfway through the game I did everything I could to avoid getting in to them. Unfortunately, this is a major part of this type of game, just think Pokemon or South Park (or your turn based RPG game of choice) and remember that you enjoyed the combat and that it wasn't a drag, like it is here.
5/10
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